


in good conscience

by Febricant



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M, working title of this was 'grindr fic' which should tell you most of what you need to know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 18:13:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6530773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Febricant/pseuds/Febricant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brad doesn’t know what’s worse, the fact that Ray is here at all, or that fact that Brad is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in good conscience

“Yo, Iceman. You got a second?”

Brad, halfway through putting his gear back on after PT, does not love the sound of that. ‘You got a second’ isn’t exactly ominous in itself, but when Poke lurks around waiting to catch him for something, it’s either because someone wants a day off or someone’s done something fucking dumb and Brad’s gonna have to quietly help them clean it up.

Brad pulls his shirt the rest of the way on and raises an eyebrow at him. “Who got their dick stuck in the wrong zipper this time?”

“Yeah, about that,” Poke says, leaning against the bank of lockers, fully dressed already. “Here.”

Brad catches the phone out of reflex, then nearly drops it on his foot. “Poke, what the fuck is wrong with you--”

“Take another look.”

The Grindr profile, quite aside from the fact that it is a Grindr profile is…. Unmistakable. “Jesus. How did you even find this?”

“Please, Brad. If you think for one second I’m the one who dragged this from the ether you’ve been drinking the Kool Aid. Nah. Just some shit got outta hand, and you know it’s not going any further. But you gonna deal with it?”

Brad takes another look at Ray’s dick. Honestly, he should be worried about how easily he recognises it, but that is something to deal with later. It’s not like he hasn’t seen it plenty of times. “Yeah,” he says, tossing the phone back.

Poke smiles, tight-lipped. “Man, when you do? Give the white boy some tips, or something. Get some better angles on that shit.”

If Brad hadn’t already given the phone back he’d be tempted to throw it at his head with great prejudice.

-

Brad buys a shitty phone on the way home. He doesn’t think too hard about it, just enough that it’ll jump onto public wifi and won’t freeze. If he stops at a cafe which has an unsecured network and spends a few minutes creating a profile, well. It’s for a good cause.

The pictures are easy enough to find, guys who look sort of the way he thinks men on Grindr would look. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s not someone--

Brad sends a couple messages to the handle seared uncomfortably into his memory, then puts it in his pocket. If plan A doesn’t work there’s always the direct approach, but Brad thinks this will work better if he proves a point.

The phone buzzes.

Brad doesn’t know whether to be surprised how quickly his suggestion of a hookup is accepted and confirmed, at a bar further up the coast towards the edge of town. He doesn’t know how these things work.

“You donkey-fucking moron,” Brad whispers, almost awed by the sheer disregard for discovery on display.

A woman a few tables over glares at him, and Brad decides it’s time to go home.

-

Brad’s been at the bar for almost twenty minutes when Ray shows up.

He’s wearing a pair of shitty black jeans and a grey t-shirt with a stain on it, though the haircut is a dead giveaway to Brad’s eyes. Fuck, at least he hasn’t showed up in uniform. It hadn’t quite felt real, until now, that Ray would show up here as agreed through an anonymous app, for an anonymous fuck.

Brad doesn’t know what’s worse, the fact that Ray is here at all or that fact that Brad is.

Ray, trained and competent and still sharper than anyone gives him any fucking credit for, spots Brad immediately.

Brad takes a long pull of his beer, watching to see what Ray will do, what conclusions he’ll undoubtedly leap to. The process takes a fraction of a second: Ray spots Brad and narrows his eyes, mouth tightening to a thin line. He looks around the bar he’s chosen, sparsely peopled on a Wednesday night in a weird part of town, eyes skimming the bar stools, the tables, the three guys desultorily launching darts at the dartboard, not a one of them a match for Brad’s -- not Brad’s -- profile. Ray clenches his jaw, lean muscle jumping in his cheek. Ray throws his shoulders back and saunters over.

“You don’t look much like your profile pic,” Ray drawls, hands deep in his pockets. “A guy might think that’s kinda creepy. I dunno, get a murder vibe or something.”

“You come here often?” Brad asks, looking up at him. Ray’s only got a couple inches on Brad standing, all of him whipcord lean and tense as a whippet.

“Seems like the kind of thing a murdery stalker with a fake profile would ask. I guess I should be glad you’re not some desk-jockey fuck twelve years outta shape with a bald spot to match, though now I’m lookin’ at you, all that testosterone’s got you thinning up a little--” he makes a grab for the top of Brad’s head, grinning now, lips peeled back off his ground-down teeth.

Brad dodges, silent, taking another sip of his beer.

Ray grabs the bottle in his fingertips, tipping it up from the bottom. Brad chokes a little, surprised, though it’s an old trick.

“Not a swallower, huh?” Ray says, a mean edge to his voice.

Brad coughs beer back into the bottle, caught off guard. “How does this usually work?” He asks, slamming the beer down with a little too much force, angry, suddenly, that Ray isn’t explaining, that he hadn’t immediately known he’d blown his cover and asked how Brad found him here. That Ray isn’t trying to pretend he’s not here for something that could end his fucking career. “You come in here and-- what? Take me to the bathroom, a quick suck and it’s over? Come on. Don’t leave me hanging.”

Ray stares down at him. Brad lets out the breath he’s holding, berating himself for the slip. Never hold your breath. Regulate. Breathe slowly. Find a rhythm.

“What if it is?” Ray says, crossing his arms. “You curious?”

Brad leans forward, crowding into Ray’s space in a way he knows he doesn’t like. “I could have been MP.”

“Then that’d be fucking entrapment or some shit, wouldn’t it?” Ray spits. “Nope, come on, you made it all the way out here, you really gonna pussy out now? You know, you had to sign up to Grindr to do this. There's a gay stain in your impeccable record already, so what’ll it be, motherfucker? You gonna ruin my night?”

Brad has a million things he could say to that, but what comes out isn’t any of them. “Better than ruining your career.”

Ray closes his eyes, and suddenly the pressure is gone. Without the glare, the impossible drive Ray has to confront Brad seems to recede, and Brad can only see that Ray looks tired and a little weatherbeaten. Thin in the cheeks. Damnably, Brad has to push aside a twinge of-- what, exactly? It can’t be guilt. He’s doing him a favour. “Ray, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You know what, Brad? I’d say this constitutes asking.” Ray opens his eyes, and the look he gives Brad sends a curl of heat right down into him, a thrum of unexpected voltage under his skin. “And I’m not supposed to fucking tell.”

Brad stands up. “Then take some better pictures of your dick,” he says, making to go, irritated, flushed under the collar. He’s made his point. Ray’s had a warning. “If I can tell it’s you--”

Ray grabs him by the wrist, grin spreading across his teeth like a nicotine-stained oil slick. “Excuse you. I’ve gotten compliments for my dick photography. My dick is a Renaissance painting compared to the circumcised baby arm you’re packing.”

“Let go of me, Ray.”

“Or what?” Ray asks, gripping harder. “You’ll out me? How’s that gonna go for you. You’re supposed to be my date.”

Brad steps closer, looking down at him. From this angle he’s familiar, 5’8” on a good day, lean muscle tending towards sinew, and not anything less than the best Marine Brad’s ever had next to him. Ray is still grinning, that shit-eating knife-slash that says someone’s in for a beating or for having strips torn off them, disguised by Ray’s taste for making a fool of himself. Fuck it, Ray drove him through Iraq and took them out alive, it’s gonna take more than this for Brad to back off. “Get your inbred hands off me, Ray,” Brad says, “I know exactly where they’ve been.”

Ray grips him so hard the bones grind. “Make me, Sergeant.”

Brad glances around, kicking himself for letting his situational awareness lapse. So far, they have attracted little attention, the barman studiously ignoring them in favour of the game on TV, the guys playing darts sinking into their next beers with the practice of day-drinkers everywhere, but still, the hair on the back of Brad’s neck bristles.

There’s no car for him to drag Ray to, unless he wants to do this in Ray’s; Brad came on the bike, wishing for speed, hoping it would just be another excuse to open it up on the freeway, there and back, a quick warning, a quick stop.

Brad wraps a hand around the back of Ray’s neck, checks his six, and drags him to the bathroom.

Ray struggles, but only for show. A hold like this, he could get out of with a twist and a sneer, but he doesn’t, letting Brad yank him into a cubicle, slamming him back against the door. “Is this what you’re after? Want me to slap you around a little, just so you can pretend you put up a fight and nobody’ll ask you about it tomorrow?”

Ray grins at him, all his teeth showing, and drops to his knees. He has one hand on the zipper of Brad’s jeans before Brad’s brain catches up, lurching back from where it has just been abruptly tipped sideways. “Jesus, what are you--”

“Tell me to stop,” Ray bites out, a manic gleam in his eyes from the neon striplight flickering above them. “Go on, Brad, tell me the prospect of a quick blowjob doesn’t get you off, and I’ll stop, but I gotta say, I’m down here with a better view, and I don’t think you fucking can.”

Brad absolutely should. This is already fucked six ways from Sunday, but Ray is right. He can’t. All he can do is call the bluff and hope for the best, plans be fucking damned. His own fucking fault for not coming in with a plan B, but damned if Brad’s going to make his own pun about being half-cocked, semi or not. “Impress me and maybe I’ll forget about it in the morning.”

“It’s three in the afternoon. I knew you were a lazy communist, but try to at least keep track of time, we’re not in fucking Iraq anymore,” Ray says, before he drags Brad’s zipper down, yanks him out of his underwear and swallows his dick like he’s done it professionally.

Brad lasts about six minutes before he comes so hard he nearly whites out, one hand spread across the back of Ray’s skull, stark against his black hair.

Ray sits back on his heels, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth, not even bothering to spit after.

“Jesus, Ray--”

“You gonna keep quiet, or am I gonna have to roofie you and leave you in here for some lucky trucker to take home?”

Brad catches his breath, looking at him, burned-out and hollow looking under the neon, lips still wet. He wants to ask a hundred questions, but the only relevant one he already has an answer to. “Don’t do this shit again, Ray. It won’t be me next time.”

“Fuck you, Colbert. Six months and I’m out, and what’ve you got to say about it? Jack and shit. Try again.”

“At least change your pictures so I can’t tell it’s you from your overgrown pubes and your shitty tattoos.” Six months and he’s out, and he hasn’t said a word until now. “Do the world a favour.”

“Trust you to have a shitfit about manscaping, you giant homosexual. I’ll get a facial next time too, how’s that?”

Brad pulls his zipper back up, standing before he hauls Ray up by the collar. “If you put your face in a picture before you’re out, I’ll fucking decapitate you.”

It would just be adding insult if Ray got bounced before his term was up.

He’s halfway down the highway before he realises Ray got nothing out of that except for a bad surprise. It’s nothing he feels guilty about, but even so, if he opens the bike up a little too far in a turn and takes it screaming, who’s to know except for the traffic cop having a good enough rendezvous with a donut to dumbly watch Brad fly by without clocking him.

-

Brad keeps the phone.

Every logical instinct says to ditch it, burn it, get it off his person and remain a single point of plausible deniability.

Sometimes the stupid app pings. Once, Brad looks at it, before leaving it face down on the kitchen table.

On Monday Ray is the same sly, cocky asshole he’s been for years, but Brad still thinks there’s something about him that looks tired, like he’s been holding onto something by the skin of his teeth for long enough that his grip is starting to slip. Then Brad has an urge to slap himself, colourful metaphors be damned. They agreed not to talk about it. Brad can stick to that.

Ray bows out of after-work drinks with Poke and Rudy, and Brad wants to grab him by the back of the neck again and--

It’s better Ray goes home.

He still hasn’t said a word about tapping out. Brad wonders if what’s got his ass clenched tighter than a virgin whore’s is disappointment that Ray hasn’t just come right out and said it yet.

When he gets home, the phone is out of batteries. Brad leaves it that way for a few days, then plugs it in without looking at it on Saturday morning. He makes himself coffee, puts on a pair of shorts, and goes for a run.

It’s not nearly enough to erase the lingering plague that is the image of Ray on his knees in a shitty bathroom, sucking Brad off like he liked it, one hand clenched tight around Brad’s thigh.

Brad jerks off in the shower, winded and pissed off, and the only thing that comes to mind is the faint sensation of bruise where Ray’s bitten-off fingernails were, hard even through the denim of Brad’s jeans.

It wouldn’t be useful or smart to punch a tiled wall just because the best fantasy he’s managed to conjure is of Ray, even if it wasn’t what happened and was instead a continuation, a what-if, a series of stupid images of Ray grinning at him, Ray talking, Ray exposing something about himself long after Brad had thought he knew him all the way through.

By Saturday afternoon Brad has picked up the phone that isn’t his again, driven to the same cafe, jumped on the same wifi, sent another fucking message.

-

Ray shows up wearing the same jeans, and damned if Brad doesn’t want to strip them off him right there and fucking then.

There’s a hole in his faded t-shirt up high by the collar, like someone’s grabbed it too hard, and Ray doesn’t even bother pretending at surprise for Brad’s dignity, coming straight over to where Brad’s got a pitcher of beer and a little table in the corner.

“You could have just texted me,” Ray says, slamming into the chair.

Brad waits for the insult but none is forthcoming. Unsettled, he tacks left, shoving the beer in Ray’s direction. “Some San Diego hipster dicksuck wanted to hook up but I picked you instead,” he says, watching Ray spill beer all over the table.

“Technically, Brad, that San Diego hipster dicksuck wanted to get off with the dude whose identity you’ve stolen for your fake Grindr profile, so I’m kinda in his court right now, even if he does have shitty taste in men.” He takes a huge gulp of his beer. “I bet you’ve used it to download like a fuckton of weird, gay-ass porn. I can’t believe you’re abusing the internet to facilitate your wildly homosexual urges. You’re making the statue of liberty cry, dude.”

Brad glares at him. “Speak for yourself, Ray. Unlike some people, I have the presence of mind not to out myself on the internet six months before I paddle out, thereby proving I’m not a victim of foetal neglect.”

Ray grins again, and Brad thinks that for all the times he’s seen it, he might never have quite clocked that sometimes it’s a terrible fucking sign. Maybe because this one, the one that says Ray’s about to fuck someone up, has never been aimed at him before. “You gonna spank me extra hard for it, Bradley?”

Brad swallows, pouring out the rest of the pitcher into his glass. “Finish your beer without getting most of it up your fucking nose and we’ll see.”

Without another word, Ray downs the rest with the alarming precision of a career drinker, turning his glass rim-down on the sticky table. “Your place or mine,” he says, mocking edge saying he knows exactly where they’re going.

-

Ray slams him bodily into the back wall of the bar, the alley holding the last of the day’s dry heat, soaked into the bricks at Brad’s back. Ray has his arm barred across the base of Brad’s throat, pressing down on his clavicles just enough to hurt.

Wordlessly, Ray shoves a hand under Brad’s shirt, skating a rough palm up the side of his chest, pressing down into the ridges of the floating ribs until Brad is nearly breathless. He’s nearly ready to shove him away and call the whole stupid thing off when Ray moves his hand, callus catching in the fine hair on Brad’s belly, lower, under the line of his belt, trapping Ray’s wrist flush to Brad’s skin, fingers just a little too far from where he wants them.

Brad hitches his hips up, just to press the contact, wordless and furious about it.

“You’re really fucking desperate, Brad,” Ray says, sparking an echo of a humvee, the hot scent of sand and sweat and the zip of gunfire around the corner.

If he never hits Iraq again it’ll be too soon but Ray finally closes a grip on him and Brad is gone, eyes closed, head thrown back against the wall of the shitty downtown bar nobody he knows ever goes to, and he’s coming all over Ray Person’s fucking hand.

-

Six months turns to five months, then four, and Brad marks out all the shitty bars in all the shitty neighbourhoods that don’t have Marines in them every Friday night.

Brad sends him messages on the phone he’s never gotten around to ditching, and Ray shows up. It’s never quite a thing that goes any further than back alleys and bathrooms and once, memorably, Ray’s crappy truck, some multicoloured monstrosity with rust in the door panels. Brad’s seen it plenty of times but now it has stains he knows they put there, and somehow, seeing it around the base makes it worse, makes him itchy and restless under the heat.

Then, suddenly, it seems like Ray’s paddle-out is three weeks away, the height of Summer laying over them like a fucking blanket.

Brad bites the back of Ray’s neck, pressing him up against the store-room shelves at Jenny’s, the latest dive to turn a blind eye for them, slick fingers pressing up between Ray’s thighs, drawing a long hiss from Ray, ready and shuddering in Brad’s grip.

He can’t put a point on when he started reciprocating, just that he did, that Ray grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him down onto some damp asphalt and said “open up, motherfucker, or this is the last time,” and he had.

Brad’s never had anything like this. Brad’s never had anything this quick and dirty, this illicit, this mind-blowingly addictive in his life. Maybe the sensation compares to opening the bike up, but the stakes are higher, and the payoff greater: a bigger rush, a visceral grip of sensation somewhere near the base of his spine where desire lives.

At work, Ray grins and salutes and avoids calling him _Staff Sergeant_ because he knows it annoys Brad that he does it almost where seniors can hear. At work, Ray does PT and bullshits with Trombley, who’s full-bore recon now, and provokes rants out of Poke, who has never asked Brad if he ever did anything about--

About _this_ , about Brad fucking Ray in a storage room on the wrong side of town while Ray’s skin breaks beneath his teeth.

“If you turn me into a vampire I’ll stake you myself,” Ray gasps, starting to shake, elbows knocking something in a plastic bottle off a shelf, whole structure beginning to sway.

“It’d have to be a murder-suicide,” Brad says, releasing his skin, speaking into the bruise he’s leaving, spread like ink, across the highest bump of Ray’s spine. “You’d be a vampire too. Shortsighted of you, don’t you think?”

Ray twists, laughing, jerk of his hips all Brad needs to lose it, to let climax roll through him like the echoing rumble of tank-treads, heavy and implacable.

Ray shoves him off, jerking himself the rest of the way with a practiced flick of his wrist, lower lip bruised by his own teeth. A moment of silence before Ray smirks, shrugging back into his jeans, looking Brad up and down. “See you,” he says, pulling a hand through hair that is still regulation-short, leaving a trail of sweat and god-knows-what-else behind.

Brad wants to tell him to wait, wants to drive somewhere and go again, a different view and the same body, whip-thin and unpredictable and somehow a fucked-up kind of fit.

What he says instead is: “What’re you gonna do after you paddle-out?”

Ray’s face shutters, sharp eyes suddenly narrow. “I’d say that’s none of your fucking business.”

“It’s my business if we’re fucking, Ray,” Brad says.

Ray bursts out laughing, wild edge to the cackle. It reminds Brad of the only time he ever saw Ray injured, broken finger sticking out at an angle, skin discoloured around it, Ray laughing as though it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. As though it didn’t hurt at all, even though he was in a splint for weeks, lucky not to need surgery, lucky not to get bounced.

“Fuck you, asshole,” Ray pronounces, just-fucked Missouri slur gone from his voice.

Brad sticks an arm out to stop him leaving, but Ray fingerpoints him right in the crook of his elbow and Brad’s arm folds, and by the time the starburst fades Ray is gone.

-

Brad sends a message the next Friday, and the one after, and then, sick with frustration and pissed off with it, he deletes the app.

He drives out somewhere he’s only been once or twice, maybe, a nowhere strip of parking lot up the hill, and grinds the fucking thing under his heel.

If Ray’s not re-upping, he’ll be telling anyone who doesn’t know yet. He’ll be pulling together a party he’s pretending to know nothing about. He’ll be handing in his gear.

Two Mondays from now, Brad will go to work and Ray won’t be there, subbed-out, not anyone Brad can pull strings to be assigned with, not anyone he’ll ever be able to rely on to pull the comms back together when shit goes wrong next time. Not anyone he’ll share a grave with, or make a jump with, or share a jacked-up tent with halfway up a mountain.

Brad has no right to stop him.

Brad goes home, answers the texts on his real phone, talks to Rudy and Pappy about the pool for the beer, goes to sleep hard, one hand absently pulling himself off until he thinks about Ray and stops.

Better to start detox now, before it affects him. Before it becomes something people will notice.

Nobody will ask, and fuck if that isn’t much of a comfort.

-

Ray’s paddle-out is packed with Marines.

Even Doc Bryan, back with the Navy a ways up the coast, shows up to bid Ray farewell in the traditional style. Poke submits to having a lei draped around his neck from somewhere, and Brad is handed a shot in a tube that’s the colour of the bad, knockoff Absinthe they’d bought once, in some port or another.

Ray had puked green, bitching through it for days.

Brad downs it, looking for another.

Poke sidles up before the speeches start, brandishing two sweating beers, one of which he extends by the neck for Brad to take. Brad swigs it, trying to wash the taste of some kind of syrup out of his mouth, watching Ray hold court, yelling about Trombley’s mom, something convoluted and outrageous and so perfectly calculated to make Trombley punch him in the kidney that Brad almost wants to step in to prevent it.

Nobody would thank him.

“You didn’t know, did you?” Poke asks, clinking the bottom of his beer with Brad’s.

Brad doesn’t even bother pretending he doesn’t know what Poke is talking about. “Hell of a thing to have missed.”

Poke shrugs. “Man, way I see it? He’s as much a trained Marine as any of us. He wanted to hide it, ‘s not like any of us would’a dug for it. It’s not like he’s waving a flag. Just didn’t want his white ass to get bounced before he could sign out on his time, you know?”

Brad nods. He does know. He can even understand why Poke asked him to take care of it, why Brad was the obvious choice. “You’re awfully calm about it. Why didn’t you fucking tell him to keep it in his pants until his ass didn’t belong to the Marines anymore?”

Poke gives him a long look, taking his time with finishing his beer. “Fuck it, dog. You think he’d have taken it from me?”

Brad has no answer to that, but luckily he is saved by the speeches starting. Trombley jumps up on the table first, paddle firmly in his hand. Ray leans back in his chair, throwing his feet up on the table like he owns the place, skinny legs crossed at the ankle.

“Get some, James!” Ray yells through his hands.

“Shut up,” Trombley says, offended. “You’re not supposed to talk!”

“Good luck with that,” Brad says, loud enough that Ray hears. “He probably came out of the womb bitching about something.”

Ray looks at him across the room, laughing, raucous, a press of bodies between them, and suddenly all Brad wants is to yank him out of the crowd, take him somewhere they’ve never been and fuck until he comes so hard he feels it for days.

Brad lifts his beer to Ray.

Ray gives him the finger, but he’s grinning, and Brad feels something loosen in his chest he hadn’t quite noticed was tight.

Poke, next to him, is looking at him strangely, that perceptive, narrow-eyed expression Brad knows is either the start of a rant or a moment of piercing insight disguised as ennui. “You good, Brad?”

I”m good,” Brad lies, but it’s only a white one. Poke, mercifully, lets it be.

-

Brad takes the paddle last. If he were to stand on the table his head would hit the ceiling, but everyone is so drunk that the jeers and jostling shove him closer to Ray, who is sprawled out mostly over the beer-stained surface by now.

“Shit, homes,” Ray slurs, just slightly. “If you’re gonna ream me, you missed your chance. I’m already so fucked I don’t think I can walk straight.” He lifts a hand, then drops it. “Sloppy seconds only for you.”

Somebody whistles, piercing, until Brad holds a hand up, calling for the best approximation of silence he’ll get. There are, in truth, hundreds of things he could say about Ray, but the most honest of them Ray would never thank him for.

Brad thinks about it for a second, then settles on it. “Ray Person. You are a pain in my ass. If my radios never work again, I will hunt you down and kill you for the sabotage.” Ray laughs into his arms, cheek resting on his elbow as he looks up at Brad. “I’m sure all the livestock back home is aching for the touch of your cock, and it will be a relief for you to go back to your roots. When you have half-human abominations running all over town, please hesitate to call.”

“Aw, Brad,” Ray manages. “Eat a dick. You’ll feel better.”

Brad taps him with the paddle before laying it in front of him.

Somebody yells something about shots, but all Brad is looking at is the slope of Ray’s mouth, the faded ink of tattoos sliding out from under the sleeves of his shirt, and the wary truce in Ray’s bleary eyes.

Brad hauls him up by a wrist, catching him as Ray stumbles.

A shout of protest rises in the party, but Ray waves them off, yelling something about leaving them wanting more.

Brad has no comment to make about it, Ray’s arm slung awkwardly over his shoulder, Brad stooping to manage. Brad turns as they shoulder through the raucous throng, pulling Ray out the front door, light and laughter spilling out with them before the door swings shut. “You can stand up now, prom queen.”

“Fuck you if you think I’m not gonna make you work for it, you repressed piece of shit.” Ray kicks him, stumbling over to the hood of a car. “Call us a fucking cab.”

-

An hour later, Ray is slamming into Brad, miraculously hard, or just not anywhere near as drunk as he’s been making out. Whichever it is, either fucking way, Brad presses back against him, cursing. He’s past caring.

Ray’s not his responsibility anymore, and the thought of it sobers him up almost as fast as Ray’s vicious hold on the back of his neck, pressing him into the mattress, and it’s every bit as good as any alley, any floor, any shitty bathroom.

It feels exactly the same.

-

Brad wakes up with a vicious hangover.

Ray is unconscious next to him, snoring wetly into the pillow he’s mashed against his open mouth.

Brad leaves him be, staggering to the shower, a barely-pleasant ache settled in his ass, legs not quite sure they’re sold on walking yet.

The shower is some kind of merciful agony. By the time he emerges Ray is awake and Brad is almost human again, and Brad has absolutely nothing to say.

Ray, as usual, isn’t burdened with the same problem. “Make me some fucking coffee,” he says, “it’s really the least you can do.”

Brad does, watching it drip with half an eye, listening to the sounds of Ray in the next room. Brad has two mugs ready when Ray appears in the kitchen in yesterday’s shirt and a pair of old boxers Brad knows far too well at this point.

Against all laws of physiology, Brad wants him. Still, after the night and at odds with his hangover, the sight of Ray bruise-mouthed and fucked-out still sends him sideways. Maybe he thought it would be strange, waking up with him, but it’s not the first time. It can’t possibly be. They’ve shared a grave. After that, it just doesn’t seem that climactic.

Ray grabs the mug, squinting at Brad. “Jesus,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Still? You’ve really gotta work on this gay panic thing, dude. It’s not a good look on you. You’ve got kind of a conversion therapy --” he wiggles his fingers at Brad’s face, “--going on. That or you’re about to join NAMBLA, and I gotta warn you, I’m way too old for their lookbook.”

“At least you don’t have a career to fuck up now,” Brad says, grinning into his coffee. “Just a regular life. Pick up the clap and spread it just like your Christian god intended.”

“Same god,” Ray points out. “He just doesn’t make us cut off parts of our dicks.”

Brad sets his coffee down. “Everything comes down to dicks with you, have you noticed that?  
Someone might think you have a fixation.”

Ray rolls his eyes, downs the rest of his coffee in a gulp that leaves it dripping down his chin, little stains appearing on his shirt. Brad doesn’t move as Ray approaches, letting him crowd into his space, just like the first time. This time, when Ray slips a hand into his pants, Brad reciprocates, leaning in.

“So does your mom,” Ray mutters in Brad’s ear, almost seductive enough to be a whisper.

-

Ray leaves an hour later.

On Monday, Brad goes back to work and Ray isn’t there.

Wherever he is, it’s not Brad’s business anymore, and what he does with himself isn’t on Brad’s conscience. Ray tapped out, for reasons Brad probably only knows a fraction of, but it’s enough. Maybe Ray could have been career, and maybe not. Either way, Brad’s got a new RTO to train, a new stack of paperwork on his desk, a new crop of bullshit from on high.

What he doesn’t have is less easily quantified, but Brad’s got some of his focus back, at least. Some of his drive. Some of his effectiveness.

He remembers Ray saying something about getting his brain back.

Maybe he’ll hear from Ray when he gets to wherever he’s going, and maybe he won’t. Even from the beginning, it was way too late to expect anything from him once he was gone.

It feels about how he expects it to.

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, thank you tumblr person who prompted this obliquely in my inbox. 
> 
> Secondly, everyone should blame csoru for so much of this, but also specifically for Ray's line about making the statue of liberty cry, because it is hers and it is #beautiful. Single tear.


End file.
